On Sunday evening, the television journalist Morley Safer aired a follow-up to his 1993 attack on the art world on 60 Minutes. He visited the Art Basel Miami Beach fair—“an upscale flea market, a shopping mall fair,” he termed it, accurately—and walked around making glib remarks about art and the wealthy. Read More
Last night, nearly 20 years after he first attacked the contemporary art world on 60 Minutes, Morley Safer returned to the subject in an episode of his newsmagazine. The result was pretty underwhelming.
Mr. Safer shot the program last December at Art Basel Miami Beach. “This is where the art trade’s carefully constructed mask of Olympian high culture begins to crack, and the underside of a booming, cutthroat commodities market is revealed,” he says, and adds, “There’s very little sense of an aesthetic experience here.” Read More
CBS has been kind enough to upload the the segment of 60 Minutes that Morley Safer shot about the contemporary art world back in 1993. Given how infamous the segment is, it’s amazing how low-key and almost silly many of his criticisms seem today. He becomes exasperated about a blank canvas by Robert Ryman, a text painting by Christopher Wool (Rat, Rat, Rat) and a bunch of sculptures by Jeff Koons. Read More
The last time that journalist Morley Safer filmed a segment for the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes about the contemporary art world, back in 1993, Marc Glimcher, president of the Pace Gallery, declared that it “stank of anti-intellectualism.” Mr. Safer had quipped that much of today’s art was “worthless junk,” among other bon mots. It was quite a takedown.
Now Mr. Safer is returning for a sequel on 60 Minutes, which will air on Sunday. Yes, on April Fools’ Day. Read More
Shortly after entering Art Basel Miami Beach this afternoon, we spotted Naomi Campbell chatting with Diddy (who was wearing some sort of leopard-print sweater and a sling) in an aisle not far from Acquavella’s booth. Read More
